History (58 page)

Meanwhile, the thought had returned to her mind that she had to go immediately to Via Garibaldi and try to barter the fl for a piece of meat for Useppe's supper. But here fortune came to her aid. In the vicinity of the Portico d'Ottavia, still on the margins of the Ghetto, in a doorway at the top of three or four steps, she glimpsed an almost-closed door from which a trickle of blood was fl Looking in, she found a sordid little room, badly illuminated by an interior window, and converted for the moment into a semi-clandestine butcher shop. A young man in an under shirt, muscular, with a bony face, his hands covered with blood, was stand ing behind a bench beside an enormous suitcase lined with bloodstained newspaper. With a cleaver in his hands, he was chopping into pieces the already-skinned and halved body of a kid. Both he and the few customers were in a hurry, also because the curfew hour was near. On one side of the

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bench, all stained and bloody, there were two bleeding kids' heads, and a pile of bills of small denomination in a basket.

A sweetish, warm smell hung over the room, nauseating. Ida ap proached unsteadily, shy, as if she had come to steal. And without saying a word, her mouth drawn down and her features trembling, she set her packet of fl on the bench. The young man barely glanced at it, with an almost grim eye; wasting no time in argument, he fl into her hands, wrapped in a piece of newspaper, the last bit that remained of the kid : a leg and part of the shoulder.

The passersby were emptying the streets in haste, but Ida had no idea of the time. In reality, since she had half dozed off in the garden, more time had passed than she thought. Now curfew was already striking; and at the corner of the Tiber, at Piazza dell'Emporio, she found herself,
un
awares, the only transient in a depopulated world. Buildings were already closing their front doors, but at that moment no patrol was policing the area. The sun, just beginning to set, seemed a strange, desert star, like the midnight suns. And as she walked along the Tiber, the river, struck by the sidelong light, looked whitish to her. On her way home, she saw nothing but this white, dazzling liquid in all the air; and she hastened, uneasily suspecting she had dropped onto a kind of exotic planet, though familiar to her footsteps. In her crooked and fl gait, she was careful to clutch jealously the shopping-bag with that piece of kid inside, like a battered sparrow returning to his tree with a rich worm. And when, be yond the opposite sidewalk, she recognized her own front door, she looked up with eyes fi with gratitude to seek along the lines of windows for those of home. To her gaze, all the windows looked like black crevasses on the face of an iceberg. The downstairs door was being closed. As she hastened, her body, in its weakness, had no weight.

That night, after such a long time without dreaming, she had a dream. Her dreams, as a rule, were colored and vivid, but this one, on the contrary, was in black-and-white, and blurred like an old photograph. She seemed to be outside an enclosure, something like an abandoned refuse dump. There was nothing but piles of shoes, worn and dusty, which seemed to have been thrown away years ago. And she, alone there, was desperately search ing in that pile for one little shoe of very small size, like a doll's, with the feeling that, for her, this search had the value of a defi ive verdict. The dream had no plot, only this one scene; but though it had no sequel or explanation, it seemed to tell a long, irremediable story.

The next morning, for the fi time after many months, Ida couldn't manage to get up early. Nor could she force herself to any enterprise,

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. .
.
. .
.
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except, around eleven, another futile pilgrimage to the Bursary to see if the payment-window had reopened today.

On her return Filomena persuaded her to eat a portion of pettol
a
. Having lost the stimulus of hunger, she swallowed the first mouth fuls reluctantly; but then she consumed the rest with such voracity that, a little later, her unaccustomed stomach had some fi of vomiting. She then lay supine on the bed, her eyes wide in the eff to restrain herself, and to avoid such a squandering of that most precious pasta.

1l weather was splendid, already summer, but she felt a great cold and a constant somnolence that every now and then fl her, bullyingly, on the bed. In those dozes, she saw again, in a very remote Beyond, that other Ida who till yesterday trotted and galloped through the streets like a racer, and lurked, and stole . . . "A teacher!! A schoolmistress!!!" she said to herself, shuddering at this last vision. And she actually saw herself under accusation, taken into Court : among the judges there was her Headmis tress, the Schools Inspector, the General in command of the Germ Forces, and some men in PAl uniforms. Now she was very hot, her throat dry. She was running a temperature. From time to time, however, a little air came to refresh her, as if a breeze of leaves or little wings fl ttering near her face:

"Hey,
rn
why you're sleeping so much?!" ''I'll get up now . . . Have you eaten?"

"Ess. Filomena gave me some pettola."

"You must say
Signora
Filomena . . . Did you say thank you, eh?" "Ess-"

"How did you say it?"

"I said :
;oin?
and she said to me:
here!"

"Join!!
Is that what you said to her? You mustn't . . . I've taught you not to ask . . . But afterwards, at least, you thanked her for her trouble? . . ."

"Ess-ess. First I said
ioin
and after I said
ciao."

Filomena and Annita were happy those days, because Santina had read in the cards that peace would come soon and they would have news of Giovannino. Tommaso, the head of the household, was pessimistic, on the other hand. He told them how he had heard, in the hospital, that the Germans meant to make a last-ditch stand, and anyway they would fi explode all those famous mines; and that even the Pope was planning to esca with the "Vatica fl in an arm plane, towards the unknown.

All the roads around Rome were loud with vehicles and with squad rons of planes. Towards the Castelli, only an enormous cloud of smoke could be seen. On the evening of June 3rd, Tommaso, who was a football fan and favored the Lazio team, came home more dejected than ever: as if

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all the rest weren't enough, something unheard of had taken place: Tir renia had eliminated Lazio. And so, the latter was excluded from the fi favoring the hated local rival, Roma.

Starting today, Tommaso was on vacation, since he was unable to reach the hospital. Eff immediately, crossing the bridges over the Tiber was forbidden. Thus the city was divided in two territories, unable to communicate with each other. At this news, in Ida's poor feverish mind, the real topography of Rome became confused and upset. All her regular urban itineraries-not only the school on the Gianicolense and Trastevere, but also Tordinona and San Lorenzo and the Bursary-appeared to her, today, unreachable, situated on the other side of the river. And the little village of the Ghetto moved away from her to a nebulous distance, beyond some bridge miles and miles long.

Tommaso also said that, from Piazza Venezia along the Corso, he had seen an endless procession of trucks fi by, fi with German soldiers, all black with soot and stained with blood. The people looked at them and said nothing. The soldiers didn't look at anybody.

The evening of June 4th, because of the electricity shortage, everyone went to bed early. Testaccio was calm beneath the glowing moon. And during the night, the Allies entered Rome. Suddenly, a great clamor was raised in the streets, as if it were New Year's Eve. Windows and doors were fl open, fl were unfurled. There were no more Germans in the city. From above and below, shouts were heard : Hurray for peace!! Long live America!!

The grandfather, wakened with a start, began to groan "oi rn oi rn hawking into the basin.

"oi rn oi rn . . .
"

"son, son . . . what is it?"

"I want . . . rruhuhur . . . oi rn . . . son son . . . oi rn save me save me . . . these Germins here . . . oi rn the Germins the Germins are jumping on me . . . uuuhrrh . . . rrrrrr uhu they're killing me . . . poor naked gypsy . . . rrhu . . .
"

There was a bustle in the house. "The Americans! The Americans have come!!"

Useppe, thrilled, ran around in the dark on his bare feet. "Hey, rn maaaaa!!!! The Mericuns! The Mericuns are here . . . !"

In her dream, Ida was back in Cosenza a little girl, and her mother was calling her insistently to get up, it was time to go to school. But outside it was cold, and she was afraid of putting on her shoes, because she had chilblains on her feet.

Too tired to get up, she barely mumbled something, and sank back into sleep.

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4

After the attack on the flour truck, Ida didn't believe she could go back again to the San Lorenzo quarter, which had become for her the very center of fear. But when two weeks had gone by after the reopening of the roads and there was still no news of

Ninnarieddu, she ventured as far as Remo's tavern.

Here, she learn the surp news that Nino had already been in Rome around the beginning of June, shortly after the Allies' entrance, dropping by the tavern for a rapid visit with Remo, who had naturally given him his mother's address in Testaccio. He was in excellent health, and high spirits, and had brought good news also of Carlo-Pyotr, who was alive and well, now living with some relatives (it was his wet-nurse, in reality ) in a little village halfway between Naples and Salerno. The pair, having crossed the front lines together unharmed, had maintained, indeed strengthened their guerrilla friendship; and they often had chances to meet in Naples, where Nino was conducting some important business.

This was, in its entirety, the news, scant and brisk, which the tavern keeper had received from Nino, who had been on an army jeep in the company of two American sergeants, and in a great hurry. Since that day Remo hadn't seen him again.

After this reassuring information, Ida heard no more from Nino until August. In that month, a card came from him, postmarked
Capri,
with the color photograph of a luxurious palace entitled
Quisisana Grand HOtel.
Mistakenly, the recipients conceived the fabulous notion that Nino was actually lodged in that palace. On the correspondence side of the card, among other signatures of strangers, he, over his own signature :
Nino,
had wri only, in English,
See you soon.
These words were undecipherable to those present: some thought they must be American, and some, instead, Japanese or Chinese. But Santina, who now plied her trade with Allied soldiers, consulted a Sicilian-Ameri on the subject. And she reported, from him, that the words meant, more or less,
Arrivederci presto.

Still autumn came, in continued, total silence from Ninnuzzu. Who, to tell the truth, during those six months, had been in Rome more than once, coming and going. But always in transit, involved in certain urgent deals of his, he had so far neglected to get in touch either with his friend the tavernkeeper or with his mother.

Meanwhile, the Allied armies, after landing in Normandy, had opened their attack on the Germans in Europe, reconquering France; and in August they had entered Paris with General de Gaulle. In all the countries formerly subjugated by the Germans, the revolt progressed, while the Red armies advanced from the East. And in Italy, after Rome, the Allies had taken Florence, stopping at the
Gothic Line,
where the advance was now held up.

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Other events of that summer: not long after the liberation of Rome, Annita, exploiting the opportunity of a lift, had seized the occasion to pay
a
visit up in the mountains, where the family hovel, and the others near it, were undamaged. However, of all the cities and villages in the plain below or up towards the hills, which you used to pass along the way, nothing was left, she reported on her return : in their place you could see nothing but a big cloud of dust. Her in-laws would name this or that locality, village, orange-grove; and shaking her head slowly, her eyes disconsolate, she would repeat that it was the same everywhere : nothing left but dust. It seemed that the strange sight of this dust cloud had invaded all the other impres sions of her journey, so she could remember nothing else.